Shale Gas

President Obama yesterday gave the most important speech on climate change in his tenure so far. In the words of Al Gore, it was the best “by any president ever”. It is a different matter that all the big cable news operators in the US chose to ignore this speech.

President Obama yesterday gave the most important speech on climate change in his tenure so far. In the words of Al Gore, it was the best “by any president ever”. It is a different matter that all the big cable news operators in the US chose to ignore this speech.

The United States has always been the climate change renegade. For the past 25-odd years, since negotiations for a global agreement to combat the threat of this potential catastrophe began, the US has been the naysayer, pushing against a deal, weakening the draft and always hiding its inaction behind the legitimate growth of emissions in countries like China and India.

Two major events happening at two ends of the world—Japan’s natural disaster and nuclear fallout and unrest in Libya and other countries of the region—have one thing in common. Energy. The fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, hit by earthquake and then the tsunami, has not yet been contained. As I write this, news is breaking about possible contamination of the seawater surrounding the damaged installation. Fears are it could lead to groundwater contamination and radioactive toxins in the food and fish. Last week there was a scare when Tokyo’s water was reported to have iodine 131 in excess of safe limits. Nobody really knows how badly the core of the reactor is damaged. Nobody’s clear how Fukushima’s problems will be buried.